Why Thai?

Many years ago I was 18.
Before this I was the girl who "can cook rice"*, but that's an entirely different albeit funny story which I'll get to later.

Anyways, when I was 17... I met a man. A man who changed my view of cooking and food.
He used to talk fondly about Thai food. Me being dense about food found it very interesting (it remains a mystery to this day how I survived on my own after moving out from my parents at the ripe old age of 15).
He told stories about how he'd get together with his family in Norway and cook thai dinners, how fun it was and how delicious it tasted.
Fast forward some time, to when I was 18 and we dated and he cooked me my very first Thai dinner. I lost my Thaivinity.

It was a simple dish, ginger chicken wok (pad king gai) with a lemon-fishsauce-chilli dipping sauce (nam pla prik).
I thought I was in heaven, what was this sensation I felt with savoury and sweet so perfectly balanced?
And all this chili? You dip the food in a fishy, lemony, garlicky hot sauce and my flavours exploded.

Later that evening I experienced my first chilli high and it was fantastic. We sat outside smoking, drinking beer and I laughed myself silly over a dry leaf. Fun times.

After this it became a thing, every anniversary and big holiday we'd cook a Thai dinner together. It didn't take long before I myself got to experience these lovely family dinners in Norway. He wasn't kidding when he told me it's a days work to cook.
It would often consist of: Panang meatballs (panang nua), sticky thai rice, the fish-lemon sauce (nam pla prik), shrimp and pork toast (kanom pang muu goong), grilled satay prawns and probably a beef recipe. At the time I was a silly vegetarian so I only ate everything but the beef and pork we made, but oh my god...

So little by little my interest in specifically Thai food but also cooking in general kinda skyrocketed.
I began learning techniques, we experienced with different flavours and bought so many books on cooking.

Even after we broke up and moved apart, we remained friends. Friends who talk an awful lot bout food and its ways.


After all of this, after so many years of art schools and music schools and stupid retail schools I finally found my calling, I'm going to become a chef specializing in Thai food.

So at 24 I applied for culinary school which took me 2,5 age long years to complete but now I am finally here.
I should perhaps also mention that it was actually an episode of Master Chef Australia that gave me the final nudge to apply to school.

I am now 20-something, living in Helsinki with a culinary degree, working as a chef at a Mexican restaurant and the world is my oyster.

-L-


*"she can cook rice"
When I was or 16 or so, I told everyone in my current school that I could cook rice. We had gone out fishing, probably not legally, and caught a huge pike, which we later cooked, and I was in charge of the rice.
I burned the rice into a big, thick, black crusty cake. It was so bad that we had to throw away the pot, which belonged to the school.
I heard that a year later, after I'd gone back home, a teacher had asked about that one pot and my friends just looked at each other and calmly exclaimed "she can cook rice". Teacher didn't understand anything.

I also once burned couscous. ...very dense.